Lifescapes

Coffee blossoms appear during the month of January, when sprinklers are fixed in the estate and water falls like artificial rain in the coffee estate for over 5 hours. The coffee plants begin germinating and the sprinklers are shifted to another plot. The plants take five days to produce the coffee blossom. The coffee plantations then look like jasmine flower gardens.

Coffee Blossoms

The flowers stay on coffee plants for over nine days. After the ninth day, the flowers slowly dry and little coffee beans grow on the coffee plants as a cluster.

Each year in the month of December or the beginning of January, coffee harvesting starts at the Chickanahally estate. Normally, when the coffee harvesting commences, we start from one corner of the estate to begin the process which lasts for up to 2 months.

Coffee Berries

While harvesting, one notices that the maximum number of berries are red in colour and some green. The labourers are asked to harvest both types of coffee beans separately as the red berries have to be placed in the pulping machine. Once the beans emerge from the machine, the coffee is referred to as parchment coffee which is dried in sunlight for over 10 days. The coffee is then packed and placed in the go down. From there the coffee is sold to buyers.

Ganesh H. R.

How often do you encounter someone who has a live birdsong for a mobile ring tone? How much rarer to meet someone who can imitate bird calls and insect sounds so convincingly that you are hard pressed to tell the difference between original and copy? Meet Ganesh, our resident Naturalist.
Let him take you on a tour of our plantation animatedly explaining the hallmarks of Arabica and Robusta coffees, the subtle dynamics of pepper harvesting, the traces left by foraging wild elephants and boars, while, in between, calling out to a swallow in his own brand of bird language.
"Enchantment unlimited", is how we would be prone to put it!